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It's tempting but not really compatible with my personal sense of integrity. I don't judge others though since Amazon has zero integrity.
by aws_throwaway 2y ago
It's tempting but not really compatible with my personal sense of integrity. I don't judge others though since Amazon has zero integrity.
- 93po 2y agoemployment is just a business transaction, i don't believe people should tie their sense of integrity to how they interact with an organization that would fire you with zero notice and not even tell you why
- hi-v-rocknroll 2y agoIntegrity doesn't vary based on the actions of other people. A better move would be to use the networking opportunity to find other high-performance people who don't like the BS, and form a productish-consultingish worker-owned co-op to replace the soulless, erratic corporation with a more stable, humane environment.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoAmazon is not people. It has no feelings
- ryandrake 2y agoPersonal integrity should not ever be in play when you’re talking about amoral objects like Amazon. When I command my computer to remove a file, I don’t think about the morality of destroying things. I issue the command and it does it. And I know my computer doesn’t care about personal integrity as it churns through its instructions. Amazon works the same way. These companies are all lawn mowers, just like Oracle. A lawn mower just cuts grass and does not deserve or respond to things like integrity and personal honor.
- nullc 2y agoIntegrity is as much about the kind of person you want to be as it is about the beneficiary of your treatment. Don't sell yourself short.
- threatofrain 2y agoIntegrity is about moral vision. Either your moral vision will become moral reality or it will become moral wishfulness. Reality is how you hold your morality accountable as something more than a story you tell yourself. So on the moral realities of Amazon...
- tivert 2y agoThere's not much integrity in being a sucker.
- SavageBeast 2y agoWhen theres money on the table you don't have any friends.
- tivert 2y ago> When theres money on the table you don't have any friends. That's taking it way too far. I think the important factor is the kind of relationship involved, specifically how does a modern corporation like Amazon view its relationship with you. I'd argue that it's fundamentally sociopathic and exploitative, so it doesn't deserve anything better than what it gives. Individuals and different kinds of organizations can be deserving of your integrity.
- denkmoon 2y agoHowever it's not a boolean choice, since OP has a third option: change workplace. Which is exactly what they are seeking to do and demonstrates their integrity.
- immibis 2y agoBe a person who treats others a little better than they treat you. Be a person who isn't fooled into thinking corporations are people.
- LVB 2y agoWhile it may be comforting to think you're just sticking it to "Amazon", if you look at almost anything you're doing, you're going to see other people who are really at the other end of this apathy. Whether it's co-workers you're blocking or giving half-effort to, customers being ignored, or the new engineer that is neglected. Is there some purely "amoral object like Amazon" stuff that's part of it too? Sure. But at least in my experience, folks who are just phoning it in cause real stress for coworkers and others, and that definitely relates to personal integrity.
- okwhateverdude 2y agoMan, all of that sounds awful for those coworkers and customers. But it isn't GPs problem. It isn't their company. He doesn't employ them. He isn't responsible for their experience. Put the blame on their poor experience squarely where it belongs: management. Why is shitty management letting some underperformer ruin things? Super convenient to claim personal integrity and shift the blame to the underperformer when management is clearly not demonstrating personal integrity and protecting their team and customers.
- kiratp 2y agoIt is the GP’s problem when this coworkers don’t want to work with them again. The tech hubs (SF, Seattle, NYC are pretty small communities.
- beacon294 2y agoThey are small in a sense and vast in a sense. You may know some people personally but never interact with them at work even though in theory your systems are adjacent.
- oblio 2y agoAny place that has hundreds of thousands of tech workers isn't small. In a town of 50k people you'll die not knowing probably 80% of them.
- keikobadthebad 2y ago
- tarsinge 2y agoYour computer physically exists, just as your lawn mower. Amazon and Oracle on the other end just exist in our minds. Physically it’s just people interacting with each other. So for me personal integrity depends on each specific interaction.
- immibis 2y agoMy hard drive is just magnetic domains, but I still interact with files. Constructs can be interacted with. I can also bang my head on the car door, even though both are actually just atoms.
- tarsinge 2y agoCar door and head are just labels on group of atoms, when you banged your head the collision was real. Try banging your head against Amazon or Oracle. Where do you start? The hard drive holding the contracts? The buildings? The web servers? The receptionist?
- immibis 2y agoThe collision was real, but it wasn't with the car door. Where do you start banging your head? The handle? The window?
- lostlogin 2y ago> amoral I thought you meant ‘immoral’, and do believe that word is probably correct, but objectively ‘amoral’ is accurate according to https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/amoral-immoral/ https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/amoral-i...
- oblio 2y agoHe probably meant amoral. Companies are constructs, machines, outside of morality. They just do. Their leaders can be moral or not.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago> Personal integrity should not ever be in play when you’re talking about amoral objects like Amazon. Personal integrity must always be in play, or else it means nothing.
- immibis 2y agoDo you feel bad about the file you're deleting?
- toadi 2y agoThat is a bit how the Germans did all the nice things during WW2. Just remove personal integrity and go along with the flow.
- oblio 2y agoOP is more like Schindler, who was part of the system but didn't actually produce shells. Schindler was a net negative for the system and most likely a net positive for humanity.
- mikhailfranco 2y agoReference: "What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle. And I gotta say, as someone who has seen that complexity for my entire life, it's very hard to get used to that idea. It's like, 'surely this is more complicated!' but it's like: Wow, this is really simple! This company is very straightforward, in its defense. This company is about one man, his alter-ego, and what he wants to inflict upon humanity -- that's it! ...Ship mediocrity, inflict misery, lie our asses off, screw our customers, and make a whole shitload of money. Yeah... you talk to Oracle, it's like, 'no, we don't fucking make dreams happen -- we make money!' ...You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle." Bryan Cantrill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zRN7XLCRhc&t=33m
- PKop 2y agoThen don't slack. Keep doing your work at a high level, but from home. Do you not see how this is the optimal strategy?
- d1sxeyes 2y agoFWIW, there are lots of comments here calling you a sucker (or saying words to that effect without the name calling), and I'm here to say the opposite. I think it's good that you have an independent sense of what's 'right' and 'wrong' for you to do, and you follow your internal moral compass on big decisions in your life. Your personal integrity should not depend on the integrity of who/whatever it is you're dealing with.
- 1dom 2y agoI'm really torn here. It feels like a good thing for society if everyone has that attitude of "do the right thing". But I also feel that it's important not to be naive: the sad/harsh reality is that there are people and bodies and organisations out there who will exploit others, and will use their gains to further carry on exploiting. Now obviously, "exploiting" here is paying huge salaries, shiny offices etc. but I think HN is generally in agreement that Amazon is one of those organisations that regularly oversteps the mark with employee rights/respect. If we accept that, then I have a really hard time shaking the idea that responding to them making employees lives hard by continuing to perform above average is no different to appeasing an alligator. What if employers exploit employees because they know there will always be employees who respond to it like this? It kind of makes sense. If we accept that, then all of a sudden "I'm doing the right thing of working hard for my own moral compass" becomes "I'm helping the bad guys because, because it makes me feel better". Again, I'm aware that thinking about this in terms of "exploitation" and "suckers" is a little extreme, but thinking about it in terms of incentives: isn't this person letting their moral compass incentivise a behaviour they object so much to that they're looking to leave? edit: for clarity, I do hugely respect working hard for personal motivation of "doing the right thing", and I have taken this approach before. But when I got older, and reflected, I concluded I let my own ego enable things which make the world a worse place, which is a bigger no-no for me personally. It does need to be balanced off against falling into an almost paranoia of "is this person/group just trying to exploit me".
- beacon294 2y agoAgreed. The game "tit for tat" requires you actually tit if you get a tat. The tit and tat can last a "long time" for the human mind which is not relevant to the game structure. The mind may also "feel bad" about the tit.
- nborwankar 2y agoSeems ironic to be working for a company without integrity, drawing a salary ie your livelihood from such an organization while believing somehow your personal integrity is not already impacted by doing so. The two seem incompatible to an outside observer.
- Panzer04 2y agoFor what its worth, I largely agree with you. The world shouldn't be about milking everything you can while giving nothing.